He spread out the blanket with a flourish and set the basket in the center of it. Rebekah, whose appetite was already reasonably well sated from the night she had spent in town, picked politely at the cold lunch, biting a piece of cheese into smaller and smaller triangles and popping grapes against the top of her mouth.
There was wine and a tiny bottle of absinthe, and Eric imbibed freely—so freely that she began to wonder if he had really been intending to trap her with that toxic bouquet, after all. Would he be so careless if he truly thought he might be alone with a monster?
“I hated to be relieved of my duties these last few days,” he admitted idly, taking a pull from the flagon of wine. “I could hardly stand not knowing what was happening in my own command.”
“I know the feeling,” Rebekah said, leaning her head back to let the breeze cool her face. “I was once—sick—for a long time, and it was maddening to wake and realize that life had gone on without me.”
“I cannot imagine,” Eric replied, gazing at her. “I think that the world must have stopped turning without you fully present in it.”
Rebekah was not prone to blushing, but now she couldn’t help it. To hide how flustered she was, she jumped to her feet. “Will you walk with me for a bit?” she asked. “I think the wine is going to my head in this sun.” She had barely touched her glass, but he stood courteously and brushed the wrinkles from his clothing.
“I would be delighted to walk with you,” he replied formally, taking her arm. She had to look away from his mouth. His lips were somehow both soft and firm. She could imagine them on her throat, on the hollow above her hip bones...everywhere.
Rebekah kept her eyes on the sparkling skein of river below them as they made their way along the edge of the bluff. It seemed as though she changed her mind from one minute to the next: She simply couldn’t tell if he was hunting her, or courting her. She should be able to figure it out, after centuries of life. It was ridiculous that she still didn’t know the difference between a man who wanted to bed her and one who wanted to kill her. Yet here she was, with all the evidence pointing one way and all of her instincts pointing the other.
“Do you know who the men were, who attacked us?” she asked, turning the conversation back to her strategy.
Eric waved dismissively. “Rebels.” He shrugged. “Well-enough organized for what they were, but there was no sign that they were connected to any larger group. There are always malcontents when a lawless land submits to formal government. I expected nothing less, but we’re now closer to a safe, peaceful New Orleans.”
Rebekah wished that were true. Klaus was about to plunge the whole region into another chaotic civil war, and it would be one the army was not prepared to combat. Rebekah had once imagined the French soldiers as cannon fodder, as a horde of faceless, struggling bodies between her family and the other clans. She had to admit now that their leader had become something entirely different to her. “It is a city eager for peace,” she replied neutrally.
“Yes, and I want to protect other citizens from the fate that befell you,” he explained, avoiding her eyes.
She wondered if his awkwardness was due to conflicted feelings over her widowhood or any suspicions about her true identity. “That’s very noble,” she told him, because it was true either way.
They reached the first scattering of trees that signaled the thicker, wilder forest ahead. Enough sunlight shone through to nourish glossy green grass, and birds sang. Rebekah could feel the teeming life surrounding them, almost pressing in on them.
He walked so close to her that she could feel the heat of his skin. Suddenly, he grabbed her wrist, stopping her. Was he about to try and fight her? No...he was turning her to face him. He paused, muttered, “I hope you’ll forgive me,” and then he stepped even closer and pulled her in by her waist to kiss her.
It was light at first, questioning, and then his mouth found hers again with fresh urgency. He pressed against her until her back came up against the trunk of the oak tree whose branches spread above them. Then she pressed back, driving her body against his, knowing only that she could not be close enough to him.
Minutes or hours or days later he broke off their kiss, taking half a step back and holding her by her shoulders. “I have wanted to do that since the night we met,” he told her, his mouth curving into a satisfied smile. “I was just afraid it would be too soon. Then I saw you beside me in the infirmary, and I knew that I could not let you go.”
“I’m glad you did,” she whispered, wishing that he were kissing her again already. The wrongness of it—that he might be dangerous to her, that she should not risk trusting him, that Klaus would stake her if he knew how much she was enjoying this—made it even more appealing. Perhaps she had more in common with her brother than either of them would have thought. “It was...not too soon.”
“I know your loss is still recent,” he said, and she tried to find an expression somewhere between sad and vixenish. “But I also know that life is terribly, impossibly short. I have not felt this way since my...since—”
“Since Marion died,” she finished for him, wishing that she had never inadvertently pretended to share the same kind of loss as he had experienced. It felt like cheapening his grief somehow, to have faked her own.
“Since then,” he agreed, seeming relieved not to have to say it himself. “We are both alone in the world, Rebekah, and both living with the reminder that even those closest to us can be taken at any time. There is no time to waste.” She could see that there was more that he wanted to add, but he hesitated. She could still taste the sweetness of his mouth, and felt almost drunk off it.
“Do not waste any, then,” she urged him, realizing that she was not afraid of whatever he might say. He could tell her all about vampires, or even ask her if she was one. At that moment he could have said anything at all, and she would have accepted it.
“There is no time to waste,” he repeated softly, lifting a calloused thumb to trace her lips with an expression of wonderment on his face. “Whatever years or seconds or decades are left, I want to spend them with you. And so I hope you will understand that, and not simply assume I am mad, when I ask you to be my wife.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VIVIANNE HAD BEEN CRYING. She had cleaned her face and concealed the signs expertly, but Klaus could see a tightness around her mouth and faint traces of swelling below her eyes. He reached out to stroke her face, his hand lingering along the fine line of her jaw.
“Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter now,” he told her softly. “You know you have only to say the word and I will take you away from this pain. You don’t have to continue with this double life any longer than you choose to.”
Vivianne glanced back at the elegant mansion on the far side of the garden. Its windows were all dark, as they always were at this hour. And yet she seemed keenly aware of the witches within, of the family she was betraying by meeting him night after night.
“I had a fight with Armand,” she admitted, slipping herself into Klaus’s arms with the ease born of practice. “A terrible fight.”
“Terrible enough that the wedding is off?” he asked optimistically, nuzzling his face against her hair. It smelled of lilacs.
She pretended to shove him away reprovingly, but her heart wasn’t in it and he didn’t retreat an inch. “He has said all along that it was my choice if I want to become a full werewolf, that he would make his family respect my decision either way.”